Is the World’s Best Food on the Other Side of the Globe?

I just flew halfway around the world for the food and wine. Seriously.

The best meal I had in Australia was at Quay, the Sydney restaurant where chef Peter Gilmore cooks up food inspired by nature. Pictured here is his salad of spring vegetables, herbs, and flowers with goat's curd cigars and lemon confit. Gilmore told me that he works closely with farmers who grow bespoke vegetables and greens to his specifications. His white sprouting broccoli, for instance, is grown for exactly 20 days—no more, no less.

Gilmore asks the farmers who grow his almonds to deliver them at a particular stage of under-ripeness, while they are still green and soft. Here "young almonds" are combined with raw native freshwater marron (Australian crayfish), bergamot marmalade, grapefruit, green mango, elder, and chamomile.

Gilmore's personal favorite dish is his smoked and confit pig cheek with shiitake, shaved scallops, and Jerusalem artichoke leaves. There are only four ingredients, but the cooking process is elaborate.

I lied. My favorite dish was dessert. Gilmore is renowned for his "snow egg," a creation that comes in a different flavor depending on the season. Last week the flavor was jackfruit.

Check out the inside of a snow egg. Here's my half-eaten egg: meringue on the outside, jackfruit ice cream on the inside, granita on the bottom.

At Coriole Vineyards, in the wine country near Adelaide in South Australia, I lunched on a Coriole Platter, which included vegetables just picked in the garden next to the restaurant, a cheese called Milk the Goat, and smoked kangaroo (that's the meat you see).

Chocolate and wine pairings are a big draw in South Australia's wine country. At Hahndorf Hill Winery I tried its "Tastes of the World" offering: Four types of chocolate—two from Australia, dark chocolate with bitter orange from Spain, and dark chocolate with pink pepper from Madagascar—served with one white wine and one red, as well as a bottle of Cape Grim water, renowned as the purest water on earth (it's bottled rain water), from Tasmania. The folks at the winery explained that, like single-vineyard wines, single-origin chocolate (meaning, beans that come from a single plantation or other specific area) has the ability to reflect terroir. In other words, you should be able to taste the landscape it comes from.

In the Adelaide Central Market, at the Providore stall, I found more chocolates for pairing with wine—including ones that incorporate the local landsape, such as lemon myrtle and pink salt from the nearby Murray River. From left to right: white chocolate with lemon myrtle and freeze-dried strawberry, milk chocolate with Murray River pink salt and caramel drops, dark chocolate with chili and sour cherry, and dark chocolate with pink pepper, freeze-dried raspberry, and pistachio. Yum!

I saw plenty of not just organic but biodynamic foods on menus in Australia. My breakfast of "Eggs Rockefeller" at Gowings Bar & Grill, the restaurant attached to the QT Hotel in Sydney, consisted of a "64º biodynamic egg, warm brioche, farmed black caviar, steamed warragul greens, tarragon, hollandaise sauce."